Royals on tour: Politics, pageantry and colonialism

By Jean Gelman Taylor, Jes Fabricius Moller, Charles Reed and 8 more

Royals on Tour explores visits by European monarchs and princes to colonies, and by indigenous royals to Europe in the 1800s and early 1900s with case studies of travel by royals from Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. Such tours projected imperial dominion and asserted the status of non-European dynasties. The celebrity of royals, the increased facility of travel, and the interest of public and press made tours key encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans. The reception visitors received illustrate the dynamics of empire and international relations. Ceremonies, speeches and meetings formed part of the popular culture of empire and monarchy. Mixed in with pageantry and protocol were profound questions about the role of monarchs, imperial governance, relationships between metropolitan and overseas elites, and evolving expressions of nationalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526109408

Book preview

General editor: Andrew S. Thompson

Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie

When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding area of scholarship.

Royals on tour

SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES

WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES

ed. Andrew S. Thompson

EMPIRE OF SCHOLARS

Tamson Pietsch

HISTORY, HERITAGE AND COLONIALISM

Kynan Gentry

COUNTRY HOUSES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Stephanie Barczewski

THE RELIC STATE

Pamila Gupta

WE ARE NO LONGER IN FRANCE

Allison Drew

THE SUPPRESSION OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

ed. Robert Burroughs and Richard Huzzey

HEROIC IMPERIALISTS IN AFRICA

Berny Sèbe

Royals on tour

POLITICS, PAGEANTRY AND COLONIALISM

Edited by

Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 0937 8 hardback

First published 2018

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

CONTENTS

List of figures

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

1Empire tours: royal travel between colonies and metropoles  Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery

2Royal tour by proxy: the embassy of Sultan Alauddin of Aceh to the Netherlands, 1601–1603  Jean Gelman Taylor

3French imperial tours: Napoléon III and Eugénie in Algeria and beyond  Robert Aldrich

4Something borrowed, something blue: Prince Alfred’s precedent in overseas British royal tours, c. 1860–1925  Cindy McCreery

5Royalty, loyalism and citizenship in the nineteenth-century British settler empire  Charles V. Reed

6The Maharaja of Gondal in Europe in 1883  Caroline Keen

7Performing monarchy: the Kaiser and Kaiserin’s voyage to the Levant, 1898  Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

8Colonial kings in the metropole: the visits to France of King Sisowath (1906) and Emperor Khai Dinh (1922)  Robert Aldrich

9Tensions of empire and monarchy: the African tour of the Portuguese crown prince in 1907  Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inês Vieira Gomes

10Belgian royals on tour in the Congo, 1909–1960  Guy Vanthemsche

11Royal symbolism: Crown Prince Hirohito’s tour to Europe in 1921  Elise K. Tipton

12The throne behind the power? Royal tours of ‘Africa Italiana’ under fascism  Mark Seymour

13Strained encounters: royal Indonesian visits to the Dutch court in the early twentieth century  Susie Protschky

14The 1947 royal tour in Smuts’s Raj: South African Indian responses  Hilary Sapire

Index

FIGURES

1.1Portuguese Crown Prince Luís Filipe on tour with colonial authorities in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1907 (photograph by R.C.E. Missen, Museu-Biblioteca da Fundação Casa de Bragança. Vila Viçosa)

2.1Prince Maurits receiving the ambassadors from the Sultan of Aceh, 1602 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

4.1‘Welcome, Sailor Prince’, photograph of triumphal arch celebrating the arrival of H.R.H. Duke of Edinburgh to Emerald Hill, Melbourne, in 1867 (State Library of Victoria, Melbourne)

4.2Julian Rossi Ashton, ‘Our Sailor Princes’, wood engraving of Princes Albert Victor and George aboard their ship. Australasian Sketcher, 7 May 1881 (State Library of Victoria, Melbourne)

6.1HH Thakor Saheb Sir Bhawatsinghji Sagramji, Thakor of Gondal, photo Lafayette Portrait Studios, London, 1911 (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

8.1‘Visite de Khaï-Dinh’, antique postcard of visit of Emperor Khai Dinh to Paris, 1922 (collection of Robert Aldrich)

8.2‘Sisowath à Paris’, caricature of King Sisowath of Cambodia in Paris, cover of L’Assiette au beurre, 30 June 1906 (collection of Robert Aldrich)

9.1Crown Prince Luís Filipe, photographed in Africa, 1907 (photograph by J. & M. Lazarus, Museu-Biblioteca da Fundação Casa de Bragança. Vila Viçosa)

9.2African performance for Crown Prince Luís Filipe, Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, 1907 (photograph by J. & M. Lazarus, Museu-Biblioteca da Fundação Casa de Bragança. Vila Viçosa)

9.3Africans and Portuguese officials, Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, 1907 (photograph by J. & M. Lazarus, Museu-Biblioteca da Fundação Casa de Bragança. Vila Viçosa)

10.1King Baudouin in Kamina, Congo, 1955 (photograph by C. Lamote of Congopresse. Collection of Guy Vanthemsche)

11.1Crown Prince Hirohito and King George V in the state carriage on the way to Buckingham Palace, 1921 (Kōtaishi denka toō kinen: Renzoku kinsha daiehagaki hanshashinchō (Tokyo: Ikubunsha, 1922), plate 30. Collection of Robert Aldrich)

11.2Crown Prince Hirohito at Cambridge University on receiving an honorary doctorate, 1921 (Kōtaishi denka toō kinen: Renzoku kinsha daiehagaki hanshashinchō (Tokyo: Ikubunsha, 1922), plate 54. Collection of Robert Aldrich)

12.1King Victor Emmanuel II and Mussolini: ‘The Emperor King and the Founder of the Empire’, La Domenica del Corriere, 16 March 1937 (Biblioteca di Storia moderna et contemporanea, Rome)

12.2King Victor Emmanuel III in Eritrea, La Domenica del Corriere, 16 October 1932 (Biblioteca di Storia moderna et contemporanea, Rome)

12.3King Victor Emmanuel III elephant-hunting in Somalia, La Domenica del Corriere, 2 December 1934 (Biblioteca di Storia moderna et contemporanea, Rome)

13.1Tengku Latifah and Tengku Kalsun, daughters of the sultan of Langkat, offering orchids to Queen Wilhelmina on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of her reign, Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam, 1938 (Sparnestad)

13.2Queen Wilhelmina receiving the sultan of Modjopait at Paleis Het Loo for the Scouts World Jamboree, 1937 (Koningin Wilhelmina: Vertig jaren wijs beleid 1898–1938 (Amsterdam: De Telegraaf and H.J.W. Becht, 1938). Royal Collections, The Netherlands)

13.3Th.M. Schipper, portraits of (from left to right) the sultan of Langkat, two of his brothers, his son the crown prince and another son, and his wife, 1938 (Royal Collections, The Netherlands)

CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Aldrich is Professor of European History at the University of Sydney, and the author of works on colonial history, including Banished Potentates: Dethroning and Exiling Indigenous Monarchs under British and French Colonial Rule, 1815–1955. With Cindy McCreery, he edited Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires.

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick is Associate Professor in International History at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is the author of Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1871–1914 and Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884.

Inês Vieira Gomes is a PhD student at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Her thesis focuses on photographic archives and practices in the Portuguese African colonies between 1890 and 1940.

Caroline Keen holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has published Princely India and the British: Political Development and the Operation of Empire and An Imperial Crisis in British India: The Manipur Uprising of 1891.

Cindy McCreery is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. Her publications include The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Eighteenth-Century England, as well as journal articles and book chapters on British and colonial cultural and naval history, including Prince Alfred as the first global British royal tourist (c.1867–71). With Robert Aldrich she co-edited Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires.

Susie Protschky is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Monash University, Melbourne. She is the author of Images of the Tropics: Environment and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia and the forthcoming Photographic Subjects: Monarchy, Photography and the Dutch East Indies. This chapter is an outcome of an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (DP1092615).

Charles V. Reed is an Associate Professor of History at Elizabeth City State University in the United States. He is the author of Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects, and the Making of a British World, 1860–1911. He is president-elect of H-Net, editor of H-Empire, and associate editor of Itinerario.

Hilary Sapire is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. She has published widely on twentieth-century South African history and is completing a book on royal visits to Southern Africa and the contested histories of loyalism. She is a former editor, and current member of the editorial board, of the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Mark Seymour is Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is the author of Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians and co-editor of Politica ed emozioni nella storia d’Italia. He is co-editor of the journal Modern Italy.

Jean Gelman Taylor is Honorary Associate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her publications include The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Colonial Indonesia and Indonesia: Peoples and Histories.

Elise K. Tipton is Honorary Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. Her research focuses on the relationship between society and the state during the interwar years.

Guy Vanthemsche is Professor of Contemporary History at the Free University of Brussels. Among his most recent books is Belgium and the Congo, 1880–1980. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences and the Secretary of the Royal Historical Commission of Belgium.

Filipa Lowndes Vicente is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She is the author of Orientalisms: India between Florence and Bombay, 1860–1900 and is currently preparing English editions of Between Two Empires: British Travellers in Goa (1800–1940) and The Empire of Vision: Photography in the Portuguese Colonial Context (1860–1960), originally published in Portuguese.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge with gratitude funding from the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI) at the University of Sydney, which made possible a conference on royal tours held in 2015; several of the chapters in this volume have been developed from papers initially presented at that conference. Robert Aldrich also acknowledges a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council that has been invaluable in work on European and indigenous monarchies in the colonial age.

Our thanks go to the contributors to this volume, and to others who participated in our conference (some of whose work will appear in a special issue of the Royal Studies Journal on royal tours of British Dominions in the twentieth century), to Briony Neilson for her sterling work in putting together the manuscript, to Nicholas Keyzer for scanning several images reproduced here, to Trevor Matthews for preparing the index, to Bruce Baskerville for assistance in checking the page-proofs and to Emma Brennan at Manchester University Press for her encouragement with this and our other projects.

Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery

CHAPTER ONE

Empire tours: royal travel between colonies and metropoles

Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery

Royals have always been a peripatetic species. In the Ancient world, Hadrian spent more than half of his reign travelling the Roman empire, from Britain to the Black Sea to Egypt. When monarchs still led their forces into battle, as did St Louis during the Crusades and as did other medieval and early modern kings, travel to battlefields abroad was necessarily part of the ‘job’. With great pageantry and festivity, ‘royal entries’ marked the arrival of sovereigns into the major cities of their own realms. Emperor Charles V travelled ceaselessly through his domains in the Iberian peninsula, Low Countries, Burgundy and central Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of England made royal ‘progresses’ from one town and estate to another, sometimes bankrupting her fortunate or unfortunate hosts. Tsar Peter the Great left imperial Russia, still an exotic, distant and, in Western eyes, near barbaric kingdom, for a ‘grand embassy’ that took him to Vienna, Amsterdam and London. Neither Charles nor Elizabeth, however, visited their possessions in the New World, nor did Peter make it to the far reaches of his continental empire.

Non-European royals travelled less extensively. Rulers of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam traditionally remained immured in their forbidden cities, though Mughal rulers on the Indian subcontinent and Moroccan sultans, like early modern European counterparts, regularly moved the court around their territories, and Ottoman and Persian rulers made visits to neighbouring states. However, Hindu sovereigns faced the loss of caste purity if they crossed the ‘black waters’, until maharajas breached that interdiction in the second half of the nineteenth century.

A few non-Western royals travelled to Europe in the early modern period. Franciscan missionaries escorted two princes from Ceylon to Portugal at the end of the 1500s; the ‘Black Prince’, Dom João, took the name of the Portuguese king when he was baptised, and he had a church constructed on the outskirts of Lisbon. A French cleric accompanied Prince Nguyen Phuc Canh, son of the ruler of Vietnam, to France in 1787. The youthful prince was received by King Louis XVI, had his portrait painted and was the darling of the Versailles court, although hopes for an alliance between the two kingdoms and conversion of the Vietnamese dynasty to Christianity came to nought. In between those two visits, numerous ‘princes’ landed in Europe, though in a period when knowledge of distant countries was vague, and titles were far from standardised and often contested, almost any traveller might be gratified with a royal title. Pocahontas, the daughter of a Native American chief – converted to Christianity and married to an Englishman – arrived in London in 1606, and was paraded around by the Virginia Company as a princess of the Powhatan empire. Subsequent ‘royal’ visitors to Europe included four ‘Indian Kings’ who visited England in 1700, a ‘Prince of Timor’ who travelled to the Netherlands, Britain and Canada at mid-century, and the Polynesian ‘princes’ Aoutourou and Omai who returned to Europe with Louis-Antoine Bougainville and James Cook.¹

In the nineteenth century, royals began to travel more frequently and more widely, thanks in part (as will be discussed) to innovations in transport. European monarchs met for ‘summits’ and called upon one another individually, as seen by the reciprocal visits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with Emperor Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie. Recreation, affairs of state and family visits by royals married into foreign courts – notably, the progeny of Queen Victoria and of King Christian IX of Denmark, the ‘father-in-law of Europe’ – kept royals on the move.² By the fin de siècle, so many monarchs and their family members passed through France that the government had appointed a full-time official to look after visiting royals.³

The presence of non-Western royals in Europe also became somewhat more frequent, their number including some, such as the famous Sikh maharaja Duleep Singh, who had been dethroned by the British but allowed to settle in Britain.⁴ Among royal or ‘semi-royal’ visitors in the second half of the nineteenth century were the hereditary prime minister of Nepal, the shah of Persia, the Ottoman sultan, the sultan of Johore, the kings of Zululand, Hawai’i and Siam, and three rulers from Bechuanaland.⁵ For wealthy maharajas, visits to Europe were becoming as significant as the ‘Grand Tour’ of the European continent had been for the eighteenth-century British elite.⁶ In European capitals, spa towns and Mediterranean resorts, royals were far from uncommon, though they travelled and were accommodated in ways to which commoners were far from accustomed.

Writing the history of royal tours

Royal tours of the 1800s and early 1900s, and since, have created much documentation, perhaps the most obvious record contained in newspapers and magazines, newsreels and then radio and television broadcasts. Royals were (and are) celebrities, their every move shadowed by eager journalists. The press had a field day when royals came to visit, writers and readers fascinated with banquets, ribbon-cuttings and speeches, the clothing and jewellery sported by royals and tittle-tattle about their less public activities. Royal tours have also produced more official accounts by court chroniclers, often published in illustrated commemorative albums. First-person accounts range from diaries written by royals themselves – though these are sometimes closely safeguarded within royal archives, or have been lost – and by those who accompanied or came into contact with them.

Images constitute particularly important documentation. Image, after all, was a key ingredient in the popularity (or lack of it) of royal personages, with tours carefully arranged for maximum exposure of the visitors. The invention of photography, and development of cameras that could be used by amateurs – royals and others – made possible posed, official and informal shots. These provide not just portraits of individuals, but portrayals of the panoply of celebrations and decorations. How various groups are depicted, from royal parties to ‘natives’ and commoners, gives insight into social hierarchies and inter-communal relations, and to the changing ways in which tours were staged and received. They occasionally also give evidence of opposition to the royal presence.

The material culture of visits provides further sources. Tours generally involved gift exchange, from precious presentation objects offered to royals to ethnographic ‘curios’ (in the language of the colonial age), many of these artefacts are now housed in museums and royal collections. There are, as well, elaborately crafted proclamations, medals and awards, and more quotidian items, including in recent times the huge array of souvenirs that help market the monarchy.⁷ Left behind in the places visited are buildings the royals opened, statues they unveiled, plaques erected in their honour, and various other public and private ‘relics’.

Libraries, museums and private collections, and even landscapes, thus abound with evidence of royal tours. Archival documents provide details on their organisation and execution, budgets, transport, protocol, timetables, banquets and ceremonies, programmes for gala performances, and the often large cast of characters who accompanied royal visitors or who were involved in the caravans, as well as information on luggage, conveyances and travel requisites. Given the wealth of documents it is somewhat surprising that royal tours have until recently commanded relatively little scholarly attention, though the theme is now being addressed in various genres, including new books directed to general readers, among which royalty is a popular subject.⁸ They also include full-scale volumes on tours of particular countries, representative among them Jane Connors’s study of royal tours of Australia.⁹ Tours to Canada, South Africa and other parts of the British empire have also been investigated by scholars such as Phillip A. Buckner, who argue that these visits played an important role in consolidating national as well as imperial identities.¹⁰

The literature encompasses studies that specifically situate visits in the context of the history and evolution of ‘modern monarchy’, international relations and cross-cultural encounters. A pioneering volume published by Johannes Paulmann in 2000 underlined the importance of face-to-face royal encounters in the nineteenth century, when crowned heads reigned in most European countries (and thought of themselves as a majestic ‘internationale’ bound by heredity, status and intermarriage). Paulmann demonstrated how royal encounters sent strong political signals and provoked diverse responses. He introduced perspectives on ‘symbolic politics’, and the way that visits represented a ‘staging’ or ‘performance’ of monarchies seeking legitimation in the face of growing democratisation, parliamentarianism and challenges to the established order. For the public, the visits were, he added, at the very least ‘international variety shows’, even when there existed underlying ambivalence about the institution of monarchy itself.¹¹ Paulmann’s work has inspired much further research, especially in the field of cultural history, on the monarchs in Germany – thirty-three kings, princes and other royals reigned until their dynasties were all disestablished after 1918, leaving historians a plethora of case studies to investigate.¹²

Not surprisingly the British monarchy has attracted much attention, not least in the countless biographies of royals. Scholars who have contributed to the emergence of a ‘new royal history’, such as David Cannadine,¹³ have reflected on the constitutional role of royalty, as well as its spectacle, in the ‘invention of tradition’ and the ‘ornamentalist’ connections between Britain and its empire. Several works have made royal tours a particular focus. Matthew Glencross’s book on the state visits of Edward VII discusses the diplomatic significance of that monarch’s travels within Europe.¹⁴ Charles V. Reed’s monograph on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British royal tours of empire demonstrates the importance of travel in the performance of both monarchy and imperial identity. Miles Taylor’s ongoing research points to the intimate links between Queen Victoria and India, where she sent several of her sons and grandsons on tour.¹⁵ Sarah Carter and Maria Nugent’s edited collection makes clear the importance of Victoria – occasionally incarnated by a touring prince – for Indigenous people such as Aboriginal people in Australia and Maori in New Zealand.¹⁶ For the twentieth century, Philip Murphy’s work on the British monarchy and empire has offered a detailed analysis of relations between the crown and colonies in the era of decolonisation, by which time royals were frequent travellers. Murphy has shown how members of the royal family (though never the Queen) were solicited and despatched to independence ceremonies around the empire, concluding with the presence of the Prince of Wales at the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.¹⁷ Ian Radforth’s study of an earlier Prince of Wales in Canada and the United States in 1860, and volumes edited by Frank Lorenz Müller and Heidi Mehrkens on monarchs’ heirs, show how succeeding Princes of Wales, and other sons of monarchs – often more frequent travellers than their reigning parents –were sent on ‘missions’ abroad. Their travels exemplified a brand of personal politics and imperial ‘soft diplomacy’ increasingly important (not least because of media coverage) from the late 1800s.¹⁸ These works testify to the broad contexts and wide-ranging implications of tours, and their value for an understanding of the dynamics of domestic, international and colonial affairs.

The ‘new imperial history’, and trends in historical writing that have contributed to a renewal of studies of colonialism, make possible fresh outlooks on monarchy. Royal tourists were prime exemplars of particular races, classes and genders, illustrating three central themes in the new historiography. Contemporary approaches have emphasised that colonising and colonised countries must be considered in the same analytical field, and that links between various colonies are often as significant as those between colonies and metropoles. Tours by roving royals, often visiting multiple colonial sites during the course of their journeys, were manifest ways in which ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, mother-country and overseas possessions, occupy connected terrains. Many strategies taken from literary analysis, cultural studies, postmodernism and postcolonialism have been enveloped in the new colonial history. These have encouraged scholars to ‘read’ various sorts of texts, from printed materials to images, and to examine the reception of these texts, and royal tours provide a panorama of words and pictures. They have also pointed out the ways in which individuals and groups ‘perform’ the roles assigned to them or the ones they create for themselves, and a royal tour was, in a very real sense, a performance for both visitors and hosts. Discussion of transnational linkages and cultural hybridities extends to overseas journeys, where festivities surrounding royals included both European traditions and ones – e.g., ceremonies of greeting, song, dance, art and artisanry – from local societies. In short, general trends in historiography over the past several decades beneficially influence the way royal tours can now be studied (as the chapters in this volume testify), and research on such journeys also contributes original perspectives to the new imperial history.

European royals in the colonies

Our earlier edited volume on Crowns and Colonies identified many constitutional, personal and cultural ties between monarchies, states and subjects in colonial situations.¹⁹ The present volume takes up the theme of royal tours, which figured in several chapters of that collection. Royal tours became, from the late 1800s, a primary strategy though which imperial paramountcy was projected in the colonies, feudatory obeisance to imperial authority was reflected, and mutual recognition between rulers of European nations and still independent overseas states was symbolised. The theme extends far beyond the British empire, and the cases contained here explore travels by continental European and British royals, and by Indigenous monarchs and their representatives as well. Comings and goings undertaken by sovereigns, their kin and their deputies moving between imperial centres and peripheries, and between Europe and Asia or Africa, offer a significant lens though which to view modern monarchy, cultural exchange, international relations, imperialism and decolonisation.

Visits by royals to the overseas possessions of their own and other countries, by vassal monarchs from protectorates to imperial metropoles, and by royals from countries hoping to stave off colonial takeover, we argue, were a vital, and largely new, aspect of high imperialism from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Tours expressed and promoted royal and imperial authority, though in some instances they revealed resistance against expansionist designs. They affirmed the legitimacy, status and privileges of dynasties, even those whose thrones had come under an onslaught by conquering armies and navies bent on annexing territory, proclaiming protectorates or ‘opening’ foreign countries to commerce and ‘Western civilisation’. Tours developed a personal relationship between sovereign and colonial subjects: vice-regal officials, settlers, Indigenous peoples and diasporic migrants. They were intended to foster familiarity with distant places and cultures for populations back at home. They brought a sovereign, or kinsman of a sovereign, across the world, in flesh and blood, and put him on show in a theatre of pomp and ceremonial. Tours underlined the political role of dynasties and the might (and at times weakness) of their countries, but they also revealed and affirmed the emotional, mystical and spiritual character of the monarchy itself. The monarch (or a scion) stood at the apex of an entire political, social and cultural order, and that order, and not just the traveller alone, was on display.

For overseas territories where a ‘protected’ monarchy or princely dynasty had been retained, generally stripped of real power though perhaps still treated with deference, tours showed who was ‘boss’, and how the rights of a paramount ruler overrode those of ‘underlords’. If an Indigenous monarchy had been abolished, tours emphasised how the imperial ruler had taken over the rights and privileges of a defunct dynasty: the imperial monarch as supreme military and political authority, arbiter of justice, patron of the arts, fount of honours. Tours showed off the might and majesty of monarchy. They testified to the unification of disparate territories into a single colony, and of varied colonies into a great empire. The tours aimed to procure the allegiance of the peoples over whom the monarch reigned, and his or her colonial government ruled, as well as opportunities to counter resistance, disloyalty and moves towards autonomy or independence. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, they provided recognition and status for maharajas, sultans and other loyal Indigenous rulers who had kept their thrones after foreign takeover. Visits to historical and contemporary sites of cultural expression (most obviously, places of worship) acknowledged ‘native’ traditions but also indicated how they had been brought under the guardianship – or, to be more critical, how these traditions had been appropriated – by colonial masters.

The royal visitor was the central actor in a tour, but was surrounded by an entourage of other people and a store of paraphernalia that played essential roles. Ministers and government officials from the capital conferred with vice-regal authorities, representatives of settler populations, and elders and chiefs of ‘native’ peoples. Like the royals, they engaged in ‘fact-finding’ about natural resources, economic development, political and social issues. Journalists, who made up a significant contingent in many later tours, reported on ceremonies and speeches, gauged the reception given to the visitors, and wrote about curious sites and people they discovered. Military and naval officers – and especially the warships in which the royal party often travelled – proclaimed the firepower of the colonising country for conquest of new territories, ‘pacification’ of those over which flags had already been raised, and defence against enemies and rivals in the imperial scrambles. Ordinary sailors kept the fleet shipshape, and were deployed as muscled exemplars of the bravery and bravura of European manhood. Maids and valets ensured that royal personages were suitably caparisoned in the appropriate uniforms, medals and sashes, fashionable top-hats and frock-coats. In the visitor’s voluminous baggage were packed not only countless changes of clothing and other travel needs, but gifts to be offered, decorations to be awarded, standards to be unfurled, portraits to be circulated. The ships (and trains) on which royals travelled served as mobile palaces, and the government houses and hotels in which they lodged became temporary courts. Not just a royal visitor, but the institution of monarchy had come to town.

An individual visit thus played on the emotional, cultural, ‘spectacular’ and mystical aura of the monarchy, and the show played itself out before various publics. The royal tourist was visiting kinsmen and compatriots bound by the ‘crimson thread’ of imperial bloodlines and heritage. There were also non-Europeans now bound, willingly or not, by imperial dominion and, in principle, the promises of the civilising mission. The royal’s visit provided an opportunity to show off to the travelling party, and to the world, the achievements of empire-builders, to proclaim the loyalty but also to present the grievances of settler populations, and to exhibit ‘native’ peoples and cultures. Locals had an opportunity to advertise themselves, whether different Indigenous ‘tribes’ and ethnic communities, specific cities or provinces within a colony or colonial federation, various civic and voluntary associations, individual businesses or chambers of commerce and industry. A chance to present themselves (in a very real sense) to a royal, even for a brief moment, allowed a group to enhance its status, express its remonstrations, show off its accomplishments or simply mark out its place in a colonial society.

Some tours took on special significance. The visits of Emperor Napoléon III to Algeria were the first and only ones by a reigning French monarch, and ‘first visits’ by a royal, particularly a sovereign, enjoyed a particularly memorable status. In 1874 King Christian IX undertook the first visit by a Danish monarch to Iceland, marking the millennium of Danish settlement, but it was also the occasion to issue a new constitution for the island. The Delhi durbar of 1911 marked one of the most important moments in British rule of India, when King George V and Queen Mary were crowned emperor and empress, and received feudatory royals from throughout the subcontinent, the king of Bhutan and Shan princes from Burma. Never before or after did the Raj see such an imposing manifestation of British paramountcy and royal splendour.²⁰

One royal visit could lead to others, often following a template established by initial visits, encompassing the same sights and festivities. Such visits became almost routine by the mid-twentieth century, but they still were potent moments in colonial and national histories – perhaps no more pointedly than when a visiting royal presided over a ceremony where a colony assumed its independence.

‘Native’ monarchs in imperial capitals

Tours by ‘native’ monarchs from Africa, Asia and Oceania presented, arguably, an even more complex scenario than those by Europeans. Rulers of still independent non-Western states who went to Europe were aiming to prevent the conquest of their countries by expanding colonial powers. Thus the Ottoman sultan, the Persian shah and the Siamese king were intent on affirming the sovereignty of their states, being treated as equals by fellow royals and the governments in Europe, and portraying themselves as competent and modernising rulers. If a country had already become a protectorate of a European state, a royal visit was generally intended – as was the case for Indian maharajas, Malay sultans and royals from French Indochina – to pledge the allegiance of a vassal sovereign to the paramount colonial power, and equally importantly, to affirm the status and residual powers of his dynasty.

Europeans viewed visitors from afar with great fascination, as well as with racialised stereotyping. Somewhat paradoxically, the ‘native’ princes gained credit for appearing exotic but were also expected to show themselves, in their behaviour and interests, to have become Europeanised (and thus ‘civilised’) gentlemen. This was a difficult balancing act, for instance, when a ruler with multiple wives visited a Christian country. European hospitality did not accord with certain taboos on food and drink – Muslim rulers generally did not drink alcohol, and one Indian prince insisted on shipping his own drinking water to Europe. Whether to wear ‘native’ or European clothing was always a question; the minders of the visiting Cambodian king in France suggested that crowds preferred for him to be dressed in Asian style. Social practices in which some visitors might have acceptably engaged at home – for instance, chewing betel-nut and expectorating the residue – hardly conformed to European etiquette.

Tours by non-Western royals always attracted great publicity, sometimes even more than the travels of European royals, but they achieved mixed outcomes. Two examples provide illustrations. Neil Parsons has studied one tour which scored considerable success, the 1895 visit to Britain by three ‘kings’ or ‘chiefs’ from Bechuanaland, over which London had declared a protectorate a decade earlier. The kings set out to argue against Cecil Rhodes’s designs to annex Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony, exploit its mineral resources and use the territory to launch an attack on the Transvaal. Khama, Sebele and Bathoen were committed Christians – Sebele had been baptised by Dr David Livingstone – and were teetotallers. Nonconformist ministers organised their tour, and the Africans received rapturous welcomes in Nonconformist chapels and the meeting-halls of temperance unions. Queen Victoria graciously received the visitors, all attired in natty tailored suits, and presented Bibles. In part because of the warm reception, the government decided against annexation of Bechuanaland, and it remained a protectorate until the 1960s.²¹

Less successful was the European tour of Nasr Allah Khan, second son of the emir of Afghanistan, also in 1895. The emir hoped the tour would lead to closer direct diplomatic relations with Britain and thereby cut out the ‘middle man’ (the Government of India) and preserve the independence of a country in which Britain had regularly intervened since the mid-nineteenth century. According to a detailed Afghan account, the prince toured predictable sites, including the Tower of London (‘the residence of the former shahs of England’) and Buckingham Palace (where he ‘took tea and fruit’ as refreshments); he visited P&O ships, the Armstrong munitions factory, and manufacturing plants in London, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle. He was received by Queen Victoria, and attended the Ascot races with the Prince of Wales. But, according to European accounts, the prince looked bored throughout much of his tour, and compounded this error by outstaying his welcome. The day he left London for Paris, the New York Times printed the news under the headline ‘At Last the Shahzada Goes Away’.²²

In the absence of personal